If Lindsay Clancy is found NGRI, can we PLEASE retire the ridiculous notion that she’ll be skipping merrily out of court and back into society?
That is not remotely what her future looks like.
Lindsay has remained on 1:1 suicide precautions at Tewksbury for more than THREE YEARS. One staff member, continuously assigned to ensure she doesn’t kill herself. She’s paraplegic, profoundly psychiatrically unwell and largely isolates herself from other patients.
And Tewksbury isn’t some bougie wellness retreat with fluffy robes and art therapy.
It houses people with severe, complex psychiatric illness, including patients with histories of violence, suicide attempts, firesetting, sexual offending and involvement with the criminal courts. Depending on how “forensic” patients are classified, reports suggest a substantial proportion of its psychiatric population has some connection to the criminal justice system.
Those are her contemporaries. That is her environment.
And NGRI doesn’t come with a neat little release date.
Massachusetts can repeatedly recommit someone while they remain mentally ill and their release would create a likelihood of serious harm. Potentially for LIFE.
Consider Janice Goulet. After killing an infant in 1973, Goulet was found NGRI and remained at Danvers State Hospital until 1978, then transferred to another psychiatric facility. Her involuntary commitment didn’t end until 1980/81. Even then she remained a voluntary patient. Attempts to move her into halfway houses/outpatient care repeatedly failed because she continued trying to harm herself.
And THAT may ultimately be the grim irony of Lindsay Clancy’s future.
Even if the illness that allegedly caused her children’s deaths completely remits, her danger to herself may not.
She has to live with the knowledge that she killed the three children she adored.
So no. NGRI doesn’t mean “she gets away with it.”
It could mean spending years, decades, potentially the remainder of her life, severely disabled and confined inside a state psychiatric institution, under court supervision, surrounded by profoundly unwell patients.
There is no “getting away” from any of this.